Last week Marlene wrote a blog post about ad opportunities on different social networks, where you can read more about Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts on Facebook. Now the Facebook marketing team has published an interesting infographic about the power of advertising on the platform. It includes some new global stats revolving Facebook usage as well as advertising insights. The infographic is not only a smart marketing move from Facebook, it actually also does quite a good job explaining the concept of advertising on the network. Understanding Facebook’s new advertising tool is key to effective results, and this definitely provides you with some good information, if you haven’t run an ad campaign yet.

Facebook ads statistics

Facebook is the single largest and most frequented social network in the history of the Internet and is quickly becoming quite a competitive marketing landscape. It is therefore no big surprise to learn that many businesses and brands are starting to take advantage of their advertisement services and the possibility of promoting and highlighting contests or other engaging content. The infographic explains the effectiveness of Facebook ads and how to go about targeting the right customers. The presented comparison with other online marketing channels depicts Facebook a clear winner in the online ad space. To pull out a few interesting facts:

The average user spends 6 hours and 35 minutes per month on Facebook on their desktop. This means that users spend almost double the time on Facebook than on its closest competitor Google.

Just over 50% of Facebook’s users are on mobile – that means 543 Million mobile users.

More than 3.2 Billion items are ‘liked’ or commented on every single day on Facebook – making the network the most engaged ever.

In an analysis of over 60 campaigns on Facebook, 49% had a 5x return on investment, 70% had a 3x or greater return.

Facebook ads target ‘the right audience’ at a 95% clip – 23% more than the online average.

In comparison to a 47% trust rate on traditional media, Facebook ads had a 92% trust rate.

To fully make sense of these numbers, it would be great if Facebook had provided some additional information about the actual 60 campaigns monitored. Were they a random sampling? What were the budgets? Etc. Have a look at the full infographic and let me know if you think Facebook’s advertising is relevant for your business. Remember, as Facebook makes it easier for anyone to create ads, it’s more important than ever to create advertising that’s relevant, appealing and adds value for the viewer. By ascertaining the measurement of success (target, engagement, growth, likes and so on) you will be able to utilise Facebook’s advertising to its maximum effect.